Examines seventy--plus interludes written between 1497 and 1593 for rime scheme, verse, and subject.

The important influence of the Tudor 'interlude' on later Elizabethan drama is now widely recognized and the inherent theatrical values of these short plays of the era which preceded the opening of permanent theatres have become increasingly apparent through modern productions and study. Largely written for performance by travelling players in a variety of situations, their dramatic technique and methods of staging provide valuable clues for an understanding of Shakespearean theatre. The plays given here represent the interlude in its popular and courtly forms. All are newly edited from the earliest originals and the volume includes an introduction and full explanatory notes.

The Oxford Handbook to Tudor Drama is the authoritative secondary text on Tudor drama. It both integrates recent important research across different disciplines and periods and sets a new agenda for the future study of Tudor drama, questioning a number of the central assumptions of previous studies. Balancing the interests and concerns of scholars in theatre history, drama, and literary studies, its scope reflects the broad reach of Tudor drama as a subject, inviting readers to see the Tudor century as a whole, rather than made up of artificial and misleading divisions between 'medieval' and 'renaissance', religious and secular, pre- and post-Shakespeare. The contributors, both the established leaders in their fields and the brightest young scholars, attend to the contexts, intellectual, theatrical and historical within which drama was written, produced and staged in this period, and ask us to consider afresh this most vital and complex of periods in theatre history. The book is divided into four sections: Religious Drama; Interludes and Comedies, Entertainments, Masques, and Royal Entries; and Histories and political dramas.

The Thrie Estaitis was first performed in the mid-sixteenth century to an audience of royalty and commoners alike. With its high style and penetrating political satire, it pressed for reform in Church and State and even in kingship itself with a hilarious masque of vice and corruption in high places. Sir David Lindsay's great play is a milestone in world drama. After almost 400 years it was revived by Tyrone Guthrie in a famous production for the Edinburgh Festival of 1948. Ever since then this masterpiece has been recognised as a key text in the resurgence of political theatre in modern Scotland and it appears as irreverent today as it was in Lindsay's troubled times.